SFP

Liz

I don’t get it. This guy has the worst affliction of bad-guy-face I’ve seen in this entire comic, but apart from one iffy joke about the teacher he’s replacing, he seems like a competent, genial, professional teacher. Everything about the staging and the art says we’re not supposed to like him but I’m not seeing why.

GreatWyrmGold

I feel like this is one of those characters who’s supposed to be hated. His constant sniping at every aspect of life–to the point of detracting from the theoretical point of his lecture–makes me wonder why he’s teaching a small class like this. I mean, in a large class this sort of thing might help keep students’ attention, but that’s not as important in a small class as staying on-topic and non-hostile are.

leoboiko

I’m more hyped for this than for all physical fights so far.

JohnTomato

That class looks like an photo-op for diversity.

Anna

…Without any real foundation, I’m starting to kind of hate this guy. I mean, he seems pretty witty and generally good-natured, but it’s like there’s something weirder beneath that that makes him pretty dislikable. Weird.

Markus

Ooh! Now I get to be pedantic! Alison’s claim isn’t an axiomatic one, it’s actually some sort of claim, probably either a deductive one based on some internal definition of fair, or an observation of Alison’s own emotion based on sense data.

Natsumeg

I’m there with that kid looking at his fingernails. My fingernails get so interesting when a professor proposes a question to the class.

Richard Griffith

What happened to the guy behind Alison? Did that row get disappeared?

Zmm

Seriously such a supervillian intro scene haha.

he’ll probably be useful in some way for a hwile though. but probably related to that mind reader dude

Thunder

Wonder what she’s specifically referring to.

Tylikcat

Potentially, he makes a pretty good foil for Alison, doesn’t he, youth vs. experience? Because indeed, everything about him says experience, and possibly some dodgy experiences in there. (Possibly mentor as well, though a somewhat adversarial relationship is perhaps more amusing.)

Martin Cohen

Being Mega-Girl makes many things easier.

telk

Oh I like him.

AtomicZeppelinMan

Professors of color love it when young white women let them know how the world really works.

Coyotzin

Still not sure if this teacher will become Alison’s Obi Wan or Palpatine ^^;;;

Subbak

If biodynamics anomaly aren’t heritable, I don’t see why she would have any more reason to be than other people. And nothing in the comic points to them being heritable.

∫Clémens×ds

It’s been addressed by the first professor she kind of got fired way back in issue one. As hard as she may try to avoid it, it’s people with the most success due to unchecked privilege who think they “worked the hardest to deserve it” and impose that belief system on the world.
And Alison is the most privileged human in the world.

Also there’s the fact that the whole premise of the webcomic is that the Mega Girl years were essentially her terrible period of thinking she was better than everybody else.

Tylikcat

I can’t speak to philosophy in the US generally (what philosophy I took was *ahem* quite some time ago, I’m off in neurobiology land now and generally on the other side of the lectern) …but none of this strikes me as out of keeping. And if it’s not how I teach, hell, I probably get a little too much satisfaction over the fact that I’ve gotten consistently very high student reviews on my lectures… and that more than one student has mentioned that I’ve given them nightmares. (Hey, they’re memorable, what can I say? It shows at exam time.)

To be as kind as I can be, I suppose this is pretty much why Alison went to college, and educated is what one is expected to be coming out. But darn, has she never learned to make and defend an argument? (Then again, my father was a professor, and if part of me thinks “I had to be able to presents my point of view cogently, at dinner, when I was six,” well, that mostly speaks to my upbringing, I suppose. There were substantial downsides.)

Tylikcat

From reading the next page, this is particularly interesting.

If he is indeed chiding Alison for trying to speak for all the students, when her own situation so obviously diverges from most of theirs… how he perceives himself in society is possibly highly relevant. (Though considering that there are many societies, his actual phrasing strikes me as somewhat more ambiguous.)

∫Clémens×ds

Somewhere in that class is someone who’s power is to alter the composition of the student body of the room they’re in each page, arguably.

∫Clémens×ds

The supers are a community as long as the issue of reproduction is not pressing (which it isn’t because it’s only been 20 years, meaning the supers are currently at their peak) and for “conveniently visible associated external characteristic”, I shall remind you that they have powers that break all known laws of physics. Some might pass as normal, whatever, but don’t make me believe despite the failure of Patrick’s coup there isn’t an existing group of supers supremacists who think they are plain better than normal humans. It might not be a “race” per our definition but only because we don’t have magic storms that grant magic powers to randomly selected foetuses.

And for the other part, well, yeah. That’s kind the point. Thinking you’re better than other people doesn’t make you a good person by today’s standards.

∫Clémens×ds

I counted this page only because evidently Alison and Prof. McDouche hop between classes on each page considering the student bodies inconsistencies. Remember the guy she lent a paper sheet to? Where did he go?

∫Clémens×ds

Yeah hopefully but back in her teenage years? When she was objectively someone expectional and had the narrow-minded immaturity to think she deserved it?

Also the powers are about generation and not race but it doesn’t really matter in the universe where Alison turned supervillain and decided to kill all normals.

∫Clémens×ds

Arh arh. You are hilarious.

chaosvii

You can be too at times.

∫Clémens×ds

(Reminder: next time, write “Disclaimer joke” in bold)

Columbine

Norse, Yoruban, Fon and Greek. None of which were taught in a school setting. My Dad’s Greek so that was something I had growing up. I can’t remember when I came across Norse myths, I was young. I remember them containing the first (arguably) positive portrayals of mixed race and queer people I’d seen. I found out about Nigerian and Benin religions by working backwards from the Caribbean and wondering what in the New World Voodoo was ‘African’ and what wasn’t.

To my knowledge traditional African religions arn’t taught on a school level anywhere.

Columbine

I think one of the main lessons you can take from Trickster stories (broadly speaking) is that you shouldn’t blindly trust people in positions of authority. The basic set up of Authority/Powerful Figure is feared for x, no one wants to confront them, Trickster volenteers, Trickster defeats Authority Figure with guile and humiliates them. That’s the motif I was thinking of.

GreatWyrmGold

Something about his attitude doesn’t give me high hopes that his intentions are pure.